Room 17’s H20 challenge Visit Our H20 Challenge Website!

The project that our class is working on is called the Cal Water H2O Challenge and 65 other classes around California are participating. Every class that is competing wants to win. The goal of the project is to come up with an idea that conserves water. The reason that Cal Water wanted to have classes work on a project that conserves water is because California is in a severe drought that is causing people to not use so much water. The class with the best project wins a 3 day trip to the Channel Islands that are in Santa Cruz! Our class’s goal is to help California by conserving water for our school. Then we will spread the idea to other schools and then those schools will spread it to the other schools. We have five different teams made up of our class working on the project. Those teams are the Financiers, Researchers, Engineers, Designers, and Execution Specialists. Our class is Room 17 at Shasta Elementary in Chico CA. We have 32 kids in our class and we are definitely excited for this project!

Before we began our H20 challenge our class learned about water in a variety of ways. We completed a close reading/ paraphrasing and annotation activity about the water cycle that was informative and tied in great with our Language Arts curriculum. We completed a foldable and did several interactive labs that allowed students to see the water cycle in action! We also engaged in a station activity that used several sources to help our students learn about where our Earth’s water is and helped them begin to see water as a valuable resource. We culminated this mini unit with a lesson on the drought. Videos and pictures really helped our students understand the severity of the water issue. This led us right into our challenge!

First We Learned About Water Standards: NGSS 5-ESS2.C CCSS ELA RI.5.1 CCSS ELA RI.5.2 CCSS ELA RI.5.4 CCSS ELA W.5.8

Then We Brainstormed Ways to Conserve

Heres What Our Class Decided To Do For Our H20 Challenge:

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Next we applied for jobs and established our teams Written By Peyton (student)

Financiers An important team we have is the Financiers. The financiers are lead by RJ, and are Marina, Lucy, and David. The Financiers are in charge of looking up prices of materials we need. Without the Financiers we couldn't t keep track of the money we spend and it would slow us down a lot. The Financiers are important to our project because without them we couldn't function.

Execution Specialists The Execution Specialists are the doers of our five teams. Their leader is Parker and the group includes David, Zachary, John,Josue, Angel, Brooke, VJ, Tyler, and Tanner. They are the biggest group we have out of the five groups. The Specialists are out in our garden planting and weeding. Weeding is the first thing that they have to get done. The second thing that they get to do is they get to plant all of the plants that we buy. Once the plants are planted they are the ones that have to take care of them with a little bit of help from the other teams.They have to be able to not care if they get dirty, work hard, and work together as a team. The Execution Specialists are essential to our project because they go out and do what needs to be done.

Designers One of our five teams is the Designers team. The Designers for Room 17, lead by Peyton, are Jatery, Sophia, Natalie, Emma,Ellie, and Grady. The Designer's job is to make a Powerpoint to submit to Cal Water, and make a website for our class, which is this awesome website! The Powerpoint we submit must be really good because that's what Cal Water sees. This makes the Designer's job crucial to our project.

Engineers The Engineers are a key group in our project. They are led by Landon and include Spencer, Trent, Lexi, Taylor, and Megan. The Engineers are the people that design how our idea works and they bring it to life. They make smaller scale models, sketches, and take measurements.They work together with the Researchers and Financiers to determine the best materials for our project. Without the Engineers our idea wouldn't even be able to get off the ground.

Researchers One of the five groups that are working on the Challenge is the Research group. They are co-lead by Anna and Alexa, and the rest are Kadence, Lauren, and Aliyah. Their job is to research materials and plants for other groups. We are planting a drought resistant garden, so researchers look up prices and types of plants for the garden. If we need scientific background on something the researchers find background on the material and tell us what it is. The researchers are important to our project because without them we wouldn't have enough information to do anything.

Once we were in our teams we made an action plan NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 1

NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 2

More From Our Research Team NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 4 NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 8

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More From Our Engineer Team

NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 2 NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 3 NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 6

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More From Our Finance Team NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 4 NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 5

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More From Our Execution Specialist Team NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 3 NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 8

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More From Our Design Team NGSS Science and Engineering Practice 6

We took a field trip to learn more about native plants and conservation gardening We would like to thank Zeb at Floral Native Nursery here in Chico for letting our class visit his nursery. Zeb gave us a fun tour of his nursery and taught us a lot about plants native to our area. Our research team worked hard before our field trip to prepare a list of native plants they were interested in growing and Zeb helped us select ones from their list that would work well with our garden space.

Once the planning stage was over our research and finance teams worked together to prepare a brochure which we are distributing throughout the district. The brochure offers information about our project, the drought in California, suggestions for conserving water, and information about creating a rain collection system like the one our class built.

!Ways You Can Conserve Water

1. Take!shorter!showers!

2. Not!leave!the!sink!running!

3. Not!leave!the!hose!on!

4. Only!water!your!plants!in!the!evening!or!early!morning!

5. Fix!leaky!faucets!or!put!a!bucket!under!a!leaky!faucet!and!use!the!water!for!plants!

6. Use!a!bucket!to!wash!dishes!instead!of!running!the!faucet!

7. Collect!rainwater!

8. Plant!native!drought!resistant!plants!instead!of!plants!that!need!a!lot!of!water!!

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What we did to make a difference in the drought and how you can

help too!

To Learn More About the H20 Challenge

Visit Our Website to See More From Our Project

http://sgreenberg3.wix.com/room-17-challenge

Chico Unified School District Shasta Elementary

For More Information:

droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA This website will show you the latest news about California’s drought problem. http://www.watersmartsd.org/sites/default/files/nifty50_4_14final_1.pdf This website will show you ways to save and improve your garden with drought resistant plants and lists of supplies. www.savetherain.info/water-saving-the-rain.aspx This website will show you designs to save rain water.

www.calwater.com/challenge/

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1. We learned about water

2. We brainstormed ideas to conserve

3. We decided to build a rain collection system and plant a native garden

4. We asked questions – How will we build it? What are native plants?

5. We made teams

6. We made drawings and built models

7. We did research

8. We measured our space and materials

9. We took a field trip to a native nursery

10. Prepared the garden space

11. We built our system and planted our garden

Our Rain Collection System

Our Rain Collection

Our Native Garden

About Our Process

We Also: Built a Web Page Designed Brochures Made a Power point

The drought in California is bad because most of our lakes and rivers are significantly lower than usual. This major drought is heading into its forth year. Lake Oroville is only at 32% of its full capacity. Lake Shasta is at its second lowest recorded elevation at 909 feet. This could cause more earthquakes for the state. There are more expected wildfires this year. The snow packs are the lowest recorded in 100 years! It is also the hottest it has been in California’s history.

Our area is affected by this drought because the Sacramento Valley runs off of agriculture. Your favorite fruits and other foods grown in California could cost more at the store. In the Bay Area, many people are tearing out their yards to save water by putting in plants that don’t need as much water.

We mad a brochure

Curt, a local rancher visited our class to offer some expert advice about our rain collection system. Curt helped our engineers fine tune their design and lent us his hands and tools to build our system. It was great to hear from a local rancher about how the drought was effecting his profession.

After a lot of hard work, research, and planning, we built our rain collection system

And we planted our garden...

The Final Product! We are so pleased with the final result of our project! Everyone worked so hard and it has payed off. We know we made an impact on the drought here at school and throughout the community. Although the project was complete the work wasn’t done. We reflected as a class verbally, and through writing both individually and in groups. The reflection process was valuable for us to look back on all the work they did and everything they have learned. Thanks Cal Water! We Hope It Rains!

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